A statement which, while technically accurate in a strictly literal sense, fails to convey the magnitude of the situation being described. There are many ways to use this. One common way is following the Rule of Three by having two strongly made points followed by something more casual. It may help to have a Deadpan Snarker who habitually presents things in the least exciting manner, especially if they've Seen It All. The Ditz may make understatements unintentionally.

Another infamous example: "Shall I cool your head a little?", which the title character uttered to a rebellious Teana before bombarding her into unconsciousness using her own spell.

When giving a summary of the first season, Shamal said that Fate was "going through some complications with her family at the time." Translation: Fate's a clone and her mother was an abusive monster who manipulated her.

Code Geass has Nunnally become a master of understatement with "In the past, unfortunate happenings took place inside the Special Administrative Region of Japan." "Unfortunate happenings" meaning genocide.

Fuuma: It looks like my big brother-san is starting to take this seriously. Mokona: What happens if Seishirou gets serious? Fuuma: That's when things get just a little bit scary.

Guts from Berserk tends to be fairly nonchalant about things that would send other people screaming for the hills. One instance stands out, though, when he's fighting in his pain-nullifying Berserker armor. After getting bitten by what is basically a possessed sperm whale, picked up by a tornado and dropped from a height of several hundred feet, and catching a burning main mast (that would normally take 12 men and a bunch of pulleys to lift) before it falls on his friends, he remarks, deadpan, "Well, I'm gonna be sore in the morning."

State Alchemist: You were killed for disrespecting your superior officer's orders.

Kimblee: You could say that...or you could say I made women and children go boom. And when my superiors complained...

Gluttony: Boom!

Two good Mahou Sensei Negima! examples. One, Tsukuyomi casually mentions to Fate that she's never gotten along with other people very well. Tsukuyomi only falls short of an Omnicidal Maniac in it For the Evulz because she lacks the power. Godel also sends Negi a brief note with a cheery smile about how their last meeting probably didn't go very well if he's reading this now. Godel just tried to chop Negi's limbs off and made a huge wound in 'Asuna's' shoulder.

In Digimon Tamers, one of the Digimon, which is shaped like a gear, does this a lot.

Reversed in Mobile Suit Gundam Abridged, when Char talks to Vice Admiral Dozle after one of Char's first encounters with the Gundam and reports back to Dozle (against his own will) and says the Gundam has 6 arms and eats people.

Comes up in Naruto after Madara crashes Naruto's battle with Tobi after having last been seen fighting all five Kage:

Naruto: What happened to the others?

Madara: Who knows? They're probably... not okay. [cut to all five Kage lying in pools of their own blood]

In Black Lagoon, Dutch gets Rock to take care of their hostage with the following statement:

Dutch: "Rock, could you take over babysitting? As you can see, not a lot of maternal instinct there." (in response to Revy opening fire on an unarmed child hostage)

The first preview video of Kotoura-san, where Haruka interviews herself, she gravely downplays how she thinks of her telepathy powers. She at most says, "I don't really want it," and uses her constant Dirty Mind-Reading from Manabe as an example. That is actually the least of her problems, particularly considering he's her first friend in nearly a decade. In an oversimplification, Haruka's telepathic powers left her friendless, socially stigmatized and severely traumatized. In fact, she started to sweat profusely as the "interview" goes on and eventually she decides it's too tiring to go on.

Comicbooks

Batmansaying he knows he's "not an easy person to know". Cue the dumbstruck look on the faces of the assembled Batfamily.

Oracle: Well... that's about the understatement of the century, I'd say.

A vintage Whitney Darrow cartoon for The New Yorker magazine has a trio of robbers emerging from a bank with their loot, to face an encircling cordon of heavily-armed police, a swarm of press vehicles and about a thousand rubberneckers. One of the robbers: "There must have been a leak."

Evey's reaction to V blowing up the Houses of Parliament in V for Vendetta: "But that... that's against the law!"

Transformers: More than Meets the Eye starts as it means to go on when Rewind, Ratchet, and Chromedome, intent on joining a sort of exodus quest, suddenly have Whirl and Cyclonus crash in front of them after the former tackled the latter off a cliff. Before Whirl can finish Cyclonus off, however, there's a sudden Energon explosion from the below, which knocks out Whirl, blows open a hole in the ground, and reveals a legless Tailgate, who has a panic attack after thinking he's killed Whirl and passes out. Rewind only has this to say.

Rewind: This is turning into a very odd day.

Fan Works

Used a number of times in With Strings Attached, but perhaps most famously when John enters the scene dragging Paul, who has been turned into a diamond statue: “Lads, we've a bit of a problem.”

Twilight says that Trixie has a habit for running her mouth, which isn't that much of an understatement, but after spending 2 minutes with her, Phoenix thinks that "running her mouth" just doesn't cut it.

"As I'm sure you know, Rachel, some dangerous times have come upon Middle-Earth." Elrond started.

"Understatement!" I muttered, and Elrond gave me a Look before continuing.

The Twilight Child: Cadence's reaction to a hurried recap of events by the Cutie Mark Crusaders, as Canterlot is invaded by Changelings which are being fought off by Celestia and Luna, while Discord is making it rain koala bears and pianos is simply to state: "That's unusual news."

At one point in The Many Doors of Niu Heimar after Thor attempts to restrain him, Loki throws him so hard and far that a concrete sidewalk breaks as he lands. Thor claims Loki had reacted.

Tony is also the one to hang a lampshade when Bruce describes the Hulk as an "ailment."

Tony: "You're like an expert at the understatement, I like it."

Films — Animated

Flushed Away: "Thank you... For the lift."; "Warning: Rather Cold" written on a tank of liquid nitrogen.

Hoodwinked! - when the Wolf watches Red Puckett fall several hundred feet from a moving cable car cabin, he summarizes it on his note-to-self tape recorder as, "Ouch."

In Tangled, Rapunzel rapidly shifts between elation at her new-found freedom and despair at the thought of actually having run away from her "mother" (actually her kidnapper, but she doesn't know that) several times. Flynn snarks "You know...I can't help but notice you seem a little at war with yourself here."

In The Princess and the Frog, Louis the gator admits his wish to play trumpet for a human jazz band, leading to a flashback of what happened the one time he tried to do just that. It's a Cutaway Gag to Louis hopping onto a riverboat and immediately being chased off while dodging gunfire.

Louis:(Stonefaced) It didn't end well.

Films — Live-Action

Laurel and Hardy: In the short film Helpmates, Stan Laurel tries to help a desperate Oliver Hardy clean up after a wild party before the shrewish Mrs. Hardy returns home. One thing leads to another and Stan ends up burning Ollie's house down. After a tearful apology, he caps it off by stating, "Well, I guess there's nothing left for me to do." Ollie sighs with resignation and says, "I guess not."

Ghostbusters (2016): It is stated during the confrontation with the Big Bad that, once the portal to the Other Side is opened, the dead will return to 'pester' the living. Erin points out that this doesn't sound so bad. The Big Bad clarifies that this 'pestering' will take the form of torture, death and carnage. The Ghostbusters then remark that 'pester' is a poor choice of words for what he's describing, and 'apocalypse' would probably be a more fitting one.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: "Years ago, something happened up there. Something not very nice." In the trailers for the movie, this quote by Mrs. Lovett was used to refer to Sweeney's rather... bloody... killing spree. But in the context of the movie (and the play it was based on), it referred to Benjamin Barker's false transportation for life and would lead into the number "Poor Thing", where we find out that Judge Turpin, after the above Kick the Dog moment, had his way with the guy's poor wife.

Harry: "Come seek us where our voices sound." Hermione: The Black Lake, that's obvious. Harry: "An hour long you'll have to look." Hermione: Again, obvious, though admittedly potentially problematic. Harry: "Potentially problematic"? When was the last time you held your breath underwater for an hour, Hermione?

In Star Trek, Spock Prime's assessment of the bastard who destroyed Vulcan because SP failed to save Romulus in the future: "He is a particularly troubled Romulan." Leave it to Spock - any Spock - to be a master of understatement.

From the same conversation:

Kirk: "So you're saying I have to emotionally compromise you guys." Spock Prime: Jim, I just lost my planet. I can tell you, I am emotionally compromised."

The other was provided, once again, by The Spock: "Two months ago a Federation Starship monitored an explosion of the Klingon moon Praxis." If you call being knocked off course and nearly shaken to pieces "monitoring".

Sybok: I imagine the Klingons will be quite angry. Chekov: You are a master of understatement. They are likely to destroy the planet!

In the ending of Kill Bill, Bill explains his massacre of everyone attending the Bride's wedding rehearsal by saying that he "overreacted." Oh, and this little gem:

Earl McGraw: It would appear someone objected to this union and wasn't able to hold their peace.

In Gladiator, the Emperor says of his son, "Commodus is not a moral man." Even he had no idea.

Lampshaded in I, Robot. After the robot rebellion that the Properly Paranoid protagonist Spooner predicted starts, Spooner shows up an expert in robotics who dismissed his warnings before and says with grim satisfaction:

You know, somehow, "I told you so" just doesn't quite say it.

Galaxy Quest's Tech Sergeant Fred Kwan prefers these; his reaction to being unexpectedly teleported 8 million light-years in a gel-pod to land on an alien ship was a subdued "That was a helluva thing."

In Dredd, at the end of the movie, the Chief Judge shows up to debrief Dredd on what went down at Peach Trees (including Gatling guns chewing up a block, taking out a major distribution and production hub for drugs, taking down one of the more powerful criminal organizations in Mega City One, a ridiculously high body count, and taking down four corrupt Judges).

Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith, just after the atmospheric entry tore off the bigger part of the Invisible Hand (the ship he happens to be flying): "We lost something." This was immediately lampshaded with Obi-Wan's reply: "Not to worry, we are still flying half a ship."

In Women in Trouble, when asked if she's a virgin, porn megastar Elektra Luxx replies "No."

In Dr. Strangeloveor: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, General Buck Turgidson gets several of these in quick succession when he informs the President of the United States that General Ripper, a lower echelon American military commander, has ordered a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without the approval or knowledge of the White House or the Pentagon.

When the President asks how General Ripper could possibly order such an attack, Buck says:

"Although I hate to judge before all the facts are in, it's beginning to look like General Ripper exceeded his authority."

The President questions how the Human Reliability Tests didn't catch General Ripper's burgeoning psychosis:

"Well, I don't think it's quite fair to condemn the whole program because of a single slip-up, sir."

Buck advocates following General Ripper's lead and to launch an all-out nuclear attack on Russia:

"Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops.

Earlier when the President is talking with the Soviet Premier, he attempts to describe what Ripper did.

"...one of our base commanders, he had a sort of - Well, he went a little funny in the head. You know. Just a little funny. And uh, he went and did a silly thing..."

Captain America, a soldier from the second world war with little understanding of anything more complex than a radio, stares at a circuit board while attempting to help Iron Man fix the damaged heli-carrier and tells Stark exactly what he sees.

Tony Stark: What does it look like in there? Steve Rogers: It seems to run on some form of electricity.

Ant-Man has a really fun one: as preparation for the big heist at Pym Technologies, Hank Pym asks Scott Lang to steal a gizmo from, "an old Stark warehouse." Said intel pre-dates Avengers: Age of Ultron — Stark has just finished converting the warehouse into the new Avengers headquarters.

Scott:Uh, guys? I think we have a problem. Hank, didn't you say this was, "some old warehouse?" It's not. YOU SON OF A BITCH.

A Missing Trailer Scene has Gwen Stacy informing Peter that he is a wanted man and that her father has 500 men searching for him, to which he replies that this "seems a bit excessive."

From the movie, we have Spider-Man being pretty badly wounded by The Lizard, then being flushed down a sewage pipe. His response after all this? "Oh, that sucked."

Young Frankenstein: In a deleted scene, it was revealed that, to be allowed to inherit his great-grandfather's estate, Frederick Frankenstein had to become a medical doctor on his own will and earn some measure of esteem on his field. A relative then asked if Frederick did acquire a "measure of esteem" and was told he's the fifth most respected expert on his field.

In Aliens, Burke tries to explain away his deadly scheme as "I made a decision, and it was... wrong. It was a bad call, Ripley. It was a bad call." Ripley immediately calls him out.

At the end of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, when the title pair ask Rufus if he can play the electric guitar, he says, "Well, I play a little." And then he starts playing like a rock star. Although considering in his time rock music is the basis of their whole society, this level of skill might be considered "a little" compared to everyone else.

Dumb and Dumber: Lloyd drives east instead of west on their road-trip to Aspen, across a fifth of the country before Harry wakes up and notices they're driving across completely flat plains, resulting in two understatements. Harry doesn't take the second one well:

Harry: Huh. I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this. (later)Lloyd: So we backtracked a tad.

Early in Red Cliff, Zhuge Liang mentions that he finds the formations that Gan Xing is drilling his soldiers in to be outdated, prompting this exchange.

Zhou Yu: "You are knowledgeable in the art of war?" Zhuge Liang: "Just a little."

Literature

In "Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie", the parents are loudly arguing when the mom see the children watching.

Mom: It's okay. Your father and I were just having a little disagreement.

Adamist Officer: I've always been a massive admirer of the Edenist ability to understate. But I think defining a chunk of land fifteen kilometers across that suddenly takes flight and wanders off into another dimension as a little problem is possibly the best example yet.

The Edenist: I never said little.

In David Eddings' The Tamuli Emperor Sarabian is said, by his ambassador, to use this. A hurricane is "a light breeze"; the loss of half his fleet is "a minor inconvenience"; the imminent collapse of his empire as "some civil unrest." This is a tendency common among Tamuls as they have a racial tendency toward extreme politeness.

Eddings has a tendency to use this trope. In Belgarath the Sorcerer, Belgarath notes that "Alorns take a petty delight in gross understatement" after Beltira comments "we wouldn't want that" with regards to the ending of the world. The original example would be in Castle of Wizardry. A horde of Algarian cavalry so large as to make their approach resemble thunder falls on a small army that was pursuing the protagonists, slaughtering most of them and driving the rest away. Described by King Cho-Hag as an "interesting morning."

In the novel Spock's World, Kirk has this to say about his experience in Amok Time: "Being strangled with an anh-woon can ruin your day."

This is The Way The World Ends by James Morrow: "Chapter 5 - In Which the Limitations of Civil Defense Are Explicated in a Manner Some Readers May Find Distressing." This is the chapter in which, well... look at the bloody title.

"I thought you were dead. I lost my temper," says Daine Sarrasri, by way of explanation for leveling an imperial palace with SKELETON ZOMBIE DINOSAURS and then setting hyenas on the culprit.

Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks has a brief history of the interstellar war the novel is set in. The "Statistics" section says the war lasted for forty-eight years and a month and saw (among other losses) the death of over 851 billion sentient beings, and the destruction of 91,215,660 ships, 53 planets and moons and six stars, followed by a "Historical perspective":

A small, short war that rarely extended throughout more than .02% of the galaxy and .01% by stellar population... the galaxy's elder civilizations rate the Idiran-Culture war as... one of those singularly interesting Events they see so rarely these days.

Ibram Gaunt's Vox officer Dughan Beltayn has a habit of describing any problem, from Vox interference to major Chaos incursion with "something's awry". Gaunt learns to cut to the chase and ask what's awry.

In From Russia with Love, a Soviet intelligence general says that if they don't do something to humiliate British intelligence, "There will be ... displeasure."

P. G. Wodehouse was somewhat inclined to the use of understatement for humorous effect.

Probably his most oft-quoted example:

"It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine."

When Jeeves quotes Shakespeare. Bertie comments that that Shakespeare fellow must have had a lot of clever things to say, and Jeeves replies:

"The Vervain invasion is now officially described as an unauthorized adventure. The erring officers have been corrected, thank you." "What do they call the Cetagandan invasion of Barrayar in my grandfather's time? A Reconnaissance in force?" "When they mention it at all, yes." "All twenty years of it?"

The Discworld novel Soul Music features a ruthless Troll crime boss, Chrysoprase: "People tended not to speak to Chrysoprase in case they said something that offended him. They wouldn't know it at the time. They'd know it later, when they were in some dark alley and a voice behind them said: Mr Chrysoprase is really upset."

"If you are going to make first contact with an intelligent alien race," said Cantabrigia Five, "dropping huge strip-mining robots into their homeland might not be your best move."

A brief one in the BattleTech Expanded Universe novel "Assumption of Risk," where Galen Cox is asked to describe the impromptu Solaris honor duel he was just in, fighting two Small Name, Big Ego Mechwarriors alongside Kai Allard Liao. In the fight, he had jumped his Crusader—far and away the smallest and most fragile of the four 'Mechs partaking in the duel—between two heavily armed enemy Assault 'Mechs, landing on an elevated platform barely five meters wide (which is about the width of his Crusader). He proceeds to describe his choice of position as 'a bit narrow and a tad warm.'

Wesley:(to Angel) I may have made a tiny mistake. The word Shanshu that I said meant you were going to die? Actually I think it means that you are going to live.

Cordelia: Okay, as tiny mistakes go...that's not one.

Regarding a character on Burn Notice who's attempting to blackmail Michael Westen into joining forces with a psychopath to commit 46 separate murders, and already has plans in motion to frame someone else for them:

Mal to Patience: "Well, we may not have parted on the best of terms...I realize certain words were exchanged...also, certain bullets..." (She had shot him).

The opening narration from the "Train Job", provided by Book: "The central planets formed the Alliance and decided all the planets had to join under their rule. [intercuts with footage from the Battle of Serenity] There was some disagreement on the matter."

In Safe Mal says of River: "She makes things not be smooth."

Friday Night Fights: ESPN's Teddy Atlas frequently uses "he got a little bit careless" to describe a fighter who has just been spectacularly knocked out (or "you can see his power a little bit on that punch" for the victorious fighter).

Dr. K: Gem and Gemma have confronted me with the possibility that in an effort to protect myself from future emotional trauma, I may have treated some of you with a degree of forced emotional detachment, perhaps even bordering on coldness.

Flynn: "Bordering on coldness," you say?

Summer [sarcastically]: That's ridiculous, Doctor.

Dillon [sarcastically]: You must be imagining it.

Dr. K: No, no, I'm afraid it's true.

The official description for Prillitoos, a program aimed for older people, states that it awaits those who aren't very young anymore, to watch this program.

Rimmer: I want to hurt you. Lister: Why? Rimmer: Because I'm not a very nice person.

After the future Rimmer mentions they spend time with the Hitlers and the Goerings:

Future Rimmer:It's just a bit unfortunate that the finest things tend to be in the possession of people who are judged to be a bit dodgy.

Kryten: Herman Goering is a "bit dodgy"?!

Rome has Octavius explaining why it might be better to sit out a long siege rather than burn down Cleopatra's palace:

We are trying to keep the locals calm. Burning down the royal palace with their queen still inside might make them slightly peevish.

The Shield had Claudette, having destroyed Vic Mackey's life by exposing his sins to his fellow cops PLUS his betrayal of his last remaining friend Ronnie (who was arrested), banished Vic for life from the Farmington District Precinct with the four following words: "You Can Go Now."

McCoy: Second degree burns. Not serious but I bet they smart. Spock: Doctor, you have an unsurpassed talent for understatement.

Star Trek episode "I, Mudd" has this excellent exchange

Mudd: Well of course I... left. Kirk: He broke jail. Mudd: I borrowed transportation. Kirk: He stole a ship! Mudd: The patrol reacted hostilely. Kirk: They FIRED at him! Mudd: They've no respect for private property! They damaged the bloody spaceship!

Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Peak Performance", the crew of the Enterprise comes up with a plan to make it seem as though they have destroyed the Hathaway by firing photon torpedoes at it and detonating them a millisecond after the Hathaway jumps to warp. The problem is, they don't know whether or not the Hathaway will be able to do this. Data describes the outcome of a failure to jump to warp as "unfortunate".

In the episode Clues, everyone of the crew except Data are knocked out by a wormhole. Data claims they were out for thirty seconds. Eventually overwhelming evidence surfaces that conflicts with Data's version of events. Captain Picard confronts Data:

Data: It is a mystery, sir. Picard:That is an understatement!

Played on The Vampire Diaries. Hm-m-m, do you want to know how Damon became such a bad man? Just ask him:

Damon In all this important soul-searching. And cleansing of the demons of Stefan's past, did you ever manage to get the rest of the story?

Elena He said there was more.

Damon Yeah. That's an understatement.

Occasionally played on Top Gear. One example comes from the episode where they take a trio of Alfa Romeos to the track. Richard (in the pits) radios Jeremy to see how he's doing. Jeremy replies that he's doing "Not brilliantly." Cut to Jeremy's car flipped onto its side.

Whenever some one says "That's not gone well" it's usually caught fire or crashed. Or both. (There's even a poster)

In the Botswana episode, Richard claims his car has "got a bit of water in it." He says this while watching Oliver drown in a lake.

Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak to the show's first $1,000,000 winner, Michelle Loewenstein: "You may be one of our bigger winners." (The previous winnings record being barely one-tenth of that.)

Frank Skinner: "I think that was the Daily Mail's headline at the time. "Hitler: Jolly Cross""

Death Valley Stebeck at one point phones his wife to tell her it was "weird day at work". Only if having two attempts to blow up cops by planting bombs in zombies, followed by an attack on the precinct by over a dozen zombies and having to kill two cops who got bit qualifies as 'weird'.

In their dark song Protect and Survive, The Dubliners mock an official nuclear attack survival guide that was issued by the British government in the 70's and 80's. The second stanza serves as one huge understatement.

Well a nuclear strike could be recognized / It would stand out in a crowd /There's a flash, then a bang, then a blast of heat / And a bloody great mushroom cloud / So if you happen to see one at the end of your street / Would you please pick up the telephone and inform your local police

"Weird Al" Yankovic's "You Don't Love Me Anymore" has a description to what the narrator's mate has done (among other things, pushing the guy in an elevator shaft, putting piranhas in his bathtub and shaving his eyebrows). His response? "Got a funny feeling you don't love me anymore."

John Prine's "Please Don't Bury Me" includes the following line:

When I got there, they did say, "John, it happened this-a way: you slipped upon the floor and hit your head."

The Cars: It's rather obvious that the singer of "Since You're Gone" is one accord short of suicide, and the song ends with "Since you're gone, the moonlight ain't so great." Even the synthesizer has to burst out in tears.

Arthur: What happened to the Earth? Ford: It's been disintegrated. Arthur: Has it? Ford: Yeah. It just boiled away into space. Arthur: Listen, Ford, I'm a bit upset about that.

Tabletop Games

"Warhammer 40,000 is not a happy place." This bleeds into the fandom so much that, on this very wiki, it has been remarked that such things as losing your home planet is not sufficient enough reason to Wangst.

(This borders on canon. The members of the Tanith First-And-Only lost their homeworld, and often get told to "Suck it up, already.")

Romeo and Juliet. Mercutio is fatally stabbed in a fight with Tybalt. When Benvolio asks if he's hurt, Mercutio replies, "Ay, a scratch.", then follows with, "But 'tis enough, 'twill serve." when he realizes that he's dying. In a play where everything is overstated and exaggerated, his understatement shows us how bad the situation really is, making it that much more heartbreaking.

Video Games

In BlazBlueHazama is forced to leave the heroes alive at the end of CS. His response is "Guess I went a little crazy there".

The official description of Cave Story says "This is a jumping-and-shooting action game. In a cave. ...Also you can save." Also, Momorin's "Chivalry is dead, let me tell you" after being thrown off a floating island.

RuneScape gives us the description of the quest "One Small Favor" (a quest that's an infuriatingly long Chain of Deals):

Quest Length: Short (With some longer parts as well.)

The commander of the Earth Defense Force in Earth Defense Force 2017 calls the player character, Storm 1, a "great soldier" later on in the game. For reasons on why this is an absolutely HUGE understatement, read the description for Badass in that games article.

When Metal Gear RAY is curbstomping an oil tanker into oblivion in Metal Gear Solid 2, Snake says to Otacon "This is bad..."

Metal Gear Solid 3 has this wonderful number from EVA (Snake's love interest), "Not good." What makes this an understatement is that EVA says this after Ocelot (Snake's rival) had shot out the engine of the WiG with his revolver that she was piloting to get Snake and her out of Russia, Ocelot then jumps onto the plane and proceeds to engage Snake in a hand to hand brawl with Snake not having a gun to defend himself should Ocelot pull his out (which he does), all the while EVA is trying to keep the plane stable so it doesn't crash into the lake they happen to be over. Yeah EVA, of course your current situation is not good.

MapleStory takes this to a logical extreme, and then some. Gelimer decides to make a "tiny ship" called Black Heaven. That's right, it's colossal. It's monstrous. It's inconceivable how its construction was even possible. It houses an army of evil robots. And how does it even hold itself in the air? Oh, and to hit the point home, it's first introduced in a Black Heaven cutscene: Flying next to it are more enemy ships, each fairly large, but tiny in comparison. Oh, and that tiny thing in the looming shadow of the Black Heaven? That's your airship.

In Portal, the mildly psychotic supercomputer, GLaDOS, also likes to understate things.

GLaDOS: While safety is one of many Enrichment Center goals, the Aperture Science High-Energy Pellet seen to the left of the chamber can, and has caused, permanent disabilities, such as vaporization. Please be careful.

GLaDOS: (later) As part of a previously mentioned required test protocol, we can no longer lie to you. When the testing is over you will be... missed.

At first it sounds like GLaDOS just likes you so much that it is going to miss you, but listening to GLaDOS' later line "The Enrichment Center reminds you, that in the end you will be baked, and then there will be cake", you should know what to expect.

GLaDOS: (even later) Due to mandatory scheduled maintenance, the appropriate chamber for this next testing sequence is currently unavailable. It has been replaced with a live-fire course designed for military androids. The Enrichment Center apologizes for this inconvenience and wishes you the best of luck.

GLaDOS: (again) Although the euthanizing process is remarkably painful, 8 out of 10 Aperture Science engineers believe that the companion cube is most likely incapable of feeling much pain.

GLaDOS: Please note that we have added a consequence for failure. Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record, followed by death.

In Assassin's Creed II, Cristina Vespucci said of her cousin to a prospective employer of his: "Try Amerigo out. I bet in a decade you'll have named your shipping company after him." Biggest understatement of the century.

In horror/survival RPG Koudelka, the text descriptions that you get when clicking on environments are often this. For example, in one room featuring a towering guillotine with a crimson-stained blade, blood-splattered walls and floor, and later a couple of corpses, both shot through the head and lying in pools of their own blood, you get this text: "You see dried blood spots here and there."

In Obscure 2, after one character turns into a giant, mutated abomination, pins another character to the wall with a knife, and crushes the skull of another under his foot, his friends burst in and confront him with this line.

Stan: Kenny, you've become a major jerk, man.

In Deadly Premonition, York's (well, Zach's) greatest insult to the ultimate villain of the game, Forrest Kayson, who at that point has been revealed to be an inhuman demon who has corrupted the town, caused people to kill each other, inspired the raincoat killer's spree and has just raped and murdered Emily? "You're one crazy guy".

In Civilization V you have the option of choosing Fascism for your society. The last part of the historical description reads: "This form of government was quite popular with certainstates in Central Europe during the last century but other states didn't much like it, and it was ultimately abandoned after someunpleasantness."

The Caretaker AI of WildStar claims he has developed certain instabilities that may occasionally cause him to be a sadistic psychopath.

In Armored Core Verdict Day, after hearing the The Dragon's calm explanation of his motive, that is, to gather every strong Mercenaries, have them fight each other before killing the victor, as he is "the Reaper", he is called out by your CO and Cool Old Guy, Fatman. Fatman's response to all that insanity?

Mega Man: We have a slight problem. There's about five million Robot Masters outside, and they all wanna kick my ass. (Beat Panel)Alternate Mega Man: We may wanna work on your definition of the word "slight."

Smic: [The best part of Christmas] used to be building the gargantuan robotic Father Christmas powered by atmospheric engine, who would duel with my brother's contraption for the right of the first choice of Faberge egg. Hannah: You had a strange childhood, Smic.

One is used in the author's comments on Ears for Elves. After a long and unexpected hiatus, the webcomic updated with a page proclaiming simply, "Soon". The author pointed out in her blurb beneath the image that there was a subtle hint to be found.

Narrator: The Tinth-Philkra rosette, comprised of one natural world and two habitiformed worlds, eventually tripled the size of the Enireth biosphere, but not before creating a small tide problem. The phrase "small tide problem" is an Enireth epithet.

"Up Goer Five" is a diagram of NASA's Saturn V rocket described with only the one thousand most commonly used words in English. Much of the high-tech machinery and catastrophic consequences from their misuse or malfunction are not everyday prose.

If it [the thrusters] starts pointing toward space, you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today.

El Goonish Shive: Noah and his guardian, Mr. Raven, are discussing Noah's schoolmate Grace. When Noah shares his theory that Grace is the one who killed Damien, Raven is incredulous.

Raven: We're talking about the girl who ran out of my classroom crying after reading about World War II! Noah: World War II was kind of a bummer...

In Stand Still, Stay Silent, a little of this happens as Reynir gets told, then realizes on his own, that the food crate in which he hid was destined to a crew exploring the Forbidden Zone rather than the safe zone in which he was hoping to have a vacation of sorts. The fact that there is a high risk of a disease to which he isn't immune in said Forbidden Zone only starts to describe the implications of him ending up there.

Nebula: Earth admits to Venus that Mars looks "a little rough" when she's just finished putting bandages over most of his face after it nearly cracked apart and the rest of his body is visibly injured in a similar manner. In this case, it's due to forced optimism rather than snark.

The Sturgeon Awards refers to the infamous fanfic Agony in Pink as "not a very pleasant reading."

The That Guy with the Glasses sketch "How I quit my job" ends on one. This after having played "Also Sprach Zarathustra," ripped open his shirt revealing "I QUIT!" written on his chest, and leaving to the end of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" while being chased out of the building (and through the parking lot) by security:

"What have we learned today, boys and girls? Boys and girls, we have learned that that bridge has officially been burned."

Everyman HYBRID: The boys break Damsel out of the institution, but are caught by a security guard. Jeff bodily tackles him to give the others time to run. As Evan says, "That escalated quickly."

"It's a bit late to hear this exactly from myself, isn't it?" This is the exact words from Frelean Maleau in the beginning of Chaos Fighters II-Chemical Siege after she confessed her love to Enrei before she dies.

Linkara at the very start of his review of Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu.

"Missingno.]'s a legend in game glitches and in particular Pokemon history...and apparently in some parallel universe, it spawned off into some kind of outer god that intends to consume and absorb all reality in every dimension. And it's also standing outside my door. Yeah, it's been a bit of a day."

In the 200th episode, this happens:

Linkara: If there’s a single story that has hung over this show since the first episode, it’s One More Day.

(This is followed by nineteen clips of Linkara referencing/talking/complaining/raging about One More Day, which wraps up with him looking at an image of the book and growling ”I hate you!”)

Linkara: Yeah, I think I might have brought it up once or twice.

Occurs again in the 300th episode.

Linkara: You know, in three hundred episodes you may have picked up that I'm not particularly fond of Frank Miller.

(Next comes eighteen clips of Linkara talking about Frank Miller, including how he's gone insane, is a misogynist as well as generally creepy and that his writing and directing is terrible).

In Noob, Sparadrap refers to the reason for which Master Zen stopped playing as him doing "something silly". What actually happened was that Sparadrap got Master Zen angry enough to make him throw his computer out the window. While an old lady was under said window. It's a little hard for Master Zen to play from jail, apparently.

The developer commentary of the Five Nights at Freddy's fan game One Night At Flumpty's explains the reason the player is even at the eponymous Flumpty's: Flumpty has kidnapped them and they are trapped in his nightmarish fun house. Success means you live to see another day. Failure means that your eyes are pulled out of your head and fried. Why does the egg-abomination Flumpty do this? Because he's bored and wants to make friends by playing a game with them. The problem is that the game tends to involve terror, anxiety, and people dying horribly. As explained by the creator himself:

Jonochrome: "In my mind, the story of this game is that Flumpty kidnaps you and wants to play a game with you, and if you survive, you become best friends. [Beat] Flumpty does not have the best social skills."

The entry for Isabella of France on Rejected Princesses includes a footnote about the fate of Hugh Despenser.

Despenser was first dressed in a tabard with his family crest and paraded through town on the shittiest horse they could find. Then he was given a crown of nettles, had his skin roughly tattooed with biblical verses on arrogance and retribution, and dragged in a chest around town. Then he was stripped naked, half-hanged, and had his penis and testicles cut off – which were then thrown into a large fire they’d built underneath him. He asked forgiveness of the bystanders, then let out a “ghastly, inhuman howl” and died. They split open his belly, cut out his heart and entrails, and tossed them in the fire. His head was cut off and sent to London, and his body sawn into quarters, each sent to the four next largest cities in England. He was not a popular man.

Wilson: Someone has to count the votes, and The Delightful Children promised me a slice of their birthday cake next year if I... fudged the results a little. Numbuh One:Fudged!? They weren't even on the ballot!

One episode of ReBoot has all of Mainframe infected with a bug that turns everyone and everything to stone; that is, except for Hexidecimal's lair, since it was her bug to begin with. Bob, the only one immune to the bug, storms Hexidecimal's lair and, via zipline, kicks her right out of her throne.

Hexidecimal: Funny. I sense a presence.

A meta-example from Adventure Time, if the storyboard writers are any indication: "The Lich King is Not Funny"

Odd: We-we can't be devirtualized. Ulrich: The scanners must be offline. What is going on around here anyway? Odd: I have no idea, but we've got a real problem. Ulrich: That's the understatement of the year.

Real Life

During a foreign trip in 1958, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan referred to an incident as a "little local difficulty". The incident was the resignation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and two other finance ministers. Such high level resignations could have been enough to bring down his government.

On the return journey from the South Pole in Captain Scott's expedition, Captain Oates was injured so decided to commit suicide to give his companions more chance. Suicide was - genuinely - easy, since he just had to leave the tent and quickly die of exposure. He announced his intentions with the words "I am just going outside and may be some time."

Well, not that easy, given that the tent was laced together tight with (frozen!) ties to keep the drift out and Oates essentially had no working fingers. Some, like Sir Ranulph Fiennes, have speculated that it would have been utterly impossible for Oates to go outside on his own, and the friends who knew he was a goner regardless helped Oates on his way.

Captain Eric Moody on BA Flight 009 said. ''Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped." Fortunately his efforts to save the flight met with some measure of success. Some years later he remarked that "It was, yeah, a little bit frightening." He isn't the only one, either. All airline pilots are told not to talk to the passengers about an emergency unless they know they can sound perfectly calm. Fictional reflections of this gave rise to the Danger Deadpan trope.

When Australian Olympian Janine Shepherd appeared on TED talks she spoke about how her life changed after being hit by a truck during a bike ride, after cataloguing her injuries, including her spine being broken in six places she concludes: "I was having a really bad day"

The NFPA diamond is a label giving a brief representation of the hazards of a substance. It is divided into 4 sections, with numbers 0-4 in them or special symbols. The blue section represents health risk, the red one flammability, the yellow one reactivity, and the white one reserved for special hazards like acid or oxidation. A handy guide for the number scale for each section lists yellow 4 as "may detonate". This led to the following conversation with a supervisor: "'May detonate'? Under what conditions?" "All of them." This rating is reserved for nitrogylcerin, nitrogen triiodide, chlorine dioxide, and similarly temperamental chemicals.

"We have had an anomaly. We just had an anomaly of the Delta 2 Launch Vehicle from Cape Canaveral Air Station." Statement from launch control regarding the aforementioned Delta 2 Launch Vehicle exploding spectacularly and raining debris and toxic fuel byproducts over several square miles.

"We have just had a major malfunction." The 'major malfunction' was the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger 73 seconds after liftoff.

In Japanese history, the Honno-ji Incident refers to the forced suicide of Oda Nobunaga by one of his retainers, as well as the burning of the castle he was in and the death of all his bodyguards. Nobunaga was in the final stages of reuniting Japan, and his death threw his forces into a civil war amidst the civil war. An incident, indeed.

Japan seems to have a habit of calling events like this "incidents". Imperial Japan had such minor events as the the Mukden Incident and the Nanking Incident

Back in the early days of NASA, astronauts Alan Shepard and John Glenn witnessed the launch of an Atlas rocket (the machine that would be taking them into space). The rocket blew up a few seconds later. Shepard turned to Glenn and calmly said, "I sure hope they fix that."

British understatement nearly lost a major battle in the Korean War. Whilst being over-run by Chinese forces outnumbering his men nearly fifty to one, a British brigade commander reported to his American general that "things are getting a little bit sticky here". He meant "We'd quite appreciate reinforcements." The American heard the laconic unworried voice of his subordinate, and reasoned that the British had things well under control. Reinforcements only arrived very late in the battle, allowing the remants of a British regiment to withdraw undefeated.

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Alternative Title(s):Putting It Mildly, Comedic Understatement, To Say The Least

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